The period between about 1600 and 1850 saw the
development of the collection of overseas colonies, trading posts and
military strongholds that came to be known as the British empire.

English colonial interests were first focused across the Atlantic, on
the colonies in the Caribbean and eastern seaboard of North America.

By
the eighteenth century, in common with a number of European countries,
Britain drew significant wealth from the sugar plantations of her
Atlantic colonies.

These were worked by enslaved people trafficked
across the Atlantic in European ships, via the slave trade.
Goods, people and ideas all travelled along sea routes protected by the
Royal Navy (from pirates as well as other European vessels),
contributing to the economic and cultural interchanges that defined this
British Atlantic world.

The Smithsonian has a very good online exhibition on the Atlantic World.

The Indian Ocean, the Pacific and Britain’s Empire in the East

From the early seventeenth century the East India
Company, a speculative merchant joint-stock company, had traded valuable
goods like porcelain, silk, indigo dye, salt and tea from Asia to the
British Isles.

The Company initially established coastal trading posts
in India through negotiation with local rulers.

‘India ships’ sailed
annually from the British Isles utilising the Indian Ocean’s monsoon
winds to reach the often-precarious outposts.

In the eighteenth century,
as they grew and became increasingly embroiled in conflicts with local
rulers and competing European powers, the British involvement in India
came to be shaped as much by the control of territory as by trade.

In the late eighteenth century, while the British
expanded their control over India, the American War of Independence led
to the loss of Britain’s North American colonies and parliament
discussed abolition of the slave trade.

The geographic focus (as well as
the ‘purpose’) of Empire began to shift.

And as the eighteenth
progressed into the nineteenth century, Britain expanded her interests
in the East in new ways.

James Cook
made voyages of ‘scientific discovery’ to the Pacific to pursue
astronomical measurements in Tahiti, but also to further explore the
Ocean.

Following his ‘discovery’ of Australia, the ‘First Fleet’ was
dispatched to establish a penal colony, which led in turn to settler
colonialism in Australia and latterly New Zealand.

Cartoon map showing monarchical France in the form of a sailing ship at sea.Relief shown pictorially.
- Also shows administrative divisions (departments).Text, calendar, and map names in English. Index of departments in French. Title from first sentence of text at lower left.
- "Published as the act directs, June 28th 1796, by the author, no. 49 Great Portland Street."Paris meridian.Watermark: 1794 J. Whatman. Available through the Library of Congress Web

Three Ocean Worlds

It is important to recognise that the ocean worlds
of the Atlantic, Indian Ocean and Pacific that Europeans entered over
this period were very different.

The geographies, weather systems, ocean
currents and, most importantly, histories of each ‘ocean world’ were
unique.

Though there was indigenous seafaring along and around the
coasts and islands of the Atlantic, for example, there was no large
transoceanic seafaring tradition.

In contrast, when Europeans first
sailed around the Cape into the Indian Ocean they entered a complex,
maritime world with a long history and established transoceanic trade
routes, communities and technologies.

The mechanisms and impacts of European exploration, trade and colonisation were, therefore, particular to each ocean world.

Maritime Archaeological Worlds

Finally, it is also important to remember the
larger historical narratives of Britain’s maritime empire often focus on
the lives of rich, European men.

Maritime archaeology can certainly
provide important insights into the ‘big’ events and stories (both the
celebrated and the infamous) of Britain’s Imperial past.

But it can also
offer us glimpses into the everyday lives of sailors, migrants,
convicts, indentured labourers and even slaves.

Shipwrecks and port
archaeology present a window onto a world in motion – where all types of
people and their possessions, goods and raw materials, and even ideas
were on the move.

That means that if we explore this archaeology
carefully, and ask the right research questions, we have the chance to
better understand the lives of all types of people from all over the
Empire, and thereby better understand our own world.